I had always been a heavy sleeper. When I was younger my mum and dad had said there wasn't a single space that I couldn't make comfortable for myself. My favourite? The footrest in the family car. Handy for a family that had four children, two adults and only five seats to transport them from A to B. My parents had eventually bought a bigger car and I eventually stopped sleeping in strange places but my ability to sleep through anything was unchallenged. Throughout the past couple of months, I had slept more hours than I ever thought I would need to. Mainly due to an unhealthy level of intoxication during the first couple of weeks without my parents. My record was now at a very scary 47 hours. Have you ever known anybody who slept for that long? The strange thing was that I had gone to bed twelve hours after waking up and had slept for another 10.

Following particularly traumatic surgeries, heart transplants, brain surgery and so on and so forth, patients are commonly placed into induced comas for 48 hours. This, or so the theory goes, allows the body to regenerate and heal. The only possible explanation for my recent sleep pattern had to be the same. I was healing. And I was subconsciously aware that in my dreams, I was free to see my parents as much as I desired, whilst in reality, I would never see them again.

But last night had been different. I had tossed, turned, beat my pillows in frustration, tried to read a book, tried to watch a film, had several hot drinks whilst in a scaldingly hot bath, but, eventually, at 5am, had resigned myself to my alertness, and gone out for a run. I always loved running in the morning. Especially in September. The weather had been particularly good the past couple of days. Warm, sunny days that seemed to stretch on and on. Cloudless skies during the day that turned a pinky/orange at dusk and dawn. I'm not going to be as cliché as to declare that this kind of morning made me feel lucky to be alive. But it did. My feet were pounding the pavement beneath me when my phone, currently blasting Kings of Leon into my ears began to buzz against my hip. Stopping to catch my breath, I pulled the phone from my pocket and stared at the screen.

Just a reminder that we are meeting today with Uncle Peter today at 3pm. If you don't turn up again we will assume that you aren't interested in your inheritance and your share will be divided between the three of us.

The reason for my disastrous lack of sleep hit me like a sledgehammer.

I typed out an angry reply to my charming oldest brother.

Dear darling brother,

I will of course, be attending. Can't get between you and your pound of flesh any longer can I? Looking forward to seeing you and your lovely child bride. Shall I bring champagne to toast with? Love and kisses, L xxx

I growled in frustration and jammed my phone back into the pocket on my running leggings. The man was completely insufferable. My running changed almost instantaneously and the happy, warm feelings that had been coursing around my blood suddenly disappeared.

I had cancelled three meetings with the family lawyer already and was more than aware that I was skating on very thin ice with my three elder brothers. I knew that Will and Archie were probably not as bothered as George, but all three of them had made it quite clear that I was postponing the inevitable and they were getting tired of it. Plus, they were less than impressed by the amount of airmiles they had amassed between them. But it really wasn't my fault that they chose to live so far away from London and Uncle Peter's office.

I wasn't even sure why my presence was completely necessary. I had rang Uncle Peter, the family lawyer - not really my uncle, but my dad's best friend from way back when who had handled almost every legal aspect of our lives since birth, including an unfortunate incident with George and his possession of Class A narcotics – and begged him to just have the reading of the will without me.

"They would have wanted you to be there." he told me. "There's a couple of things that they had asked me to explain to the four of you in person."

"Can I send somebody who looks like me?" I asked, throwing myself down on my bed and burying my face in my pillows. "Like, a really, really good impersonator?"

He had chuckled loudly. "One of you is bad enough."

"Okay, I'll be there." I sighed. "But I can't promise that I'll be nice to my brothers. Especially after they didn't bother showing up for wake we held."

"That's fair enough." I could hear the smile in his voice. "You realise that I have to be nice to them though?"

"I guess..." I flopped onto my back. "I don't even really care about my inheritance you know. It doesn't replace them."

"I know, but your parents had a lot of capital between them, plus they owned the house outright." he sighed. "I'm not saying it will ever replace them but there's a lot of things that you can do with your portion of the will."

"Fine..." I mumbled. "I'll be there."

I shook the memory from my head as I ran up the five steps that led to my front door. Turning my key in the lock, I pushed the door open. Silence. I looked at my watch. 7:15am. Far too early for Steve and Charlotte to have risen from their pits, especially as we hadn't started back at University yet and had nowhere to be. I kicked my running shoes off and padded towards the living room. Morning light was streaming through the large georgian windows and the room was illuminated. I skipped gently over the solid oak floor and threw myself elegantly onto the couch.

I thought about my brothers. I wondered how my parents would feel about the deterioration of our relationship. William and Archie had always been very secular. William had spent his teenage years with his head in a book. He was a maths prodigy. He had graduated from Oxford a year early and had been snapped up by an investment banking company based in Singapore and Archie was a complete gym freak and was only capable of having a conversation if it was based entirely upon the amount of fibre and protein he needed to consume to maintain his, admittedly, impressive physique. He was now based in Dubai. He worked in "security". We didn't ask questions. George had always been the triplet with whom I had the most in common. We enjoyed the same films and were very outgoing and sociable. Before I had grown boobs and he had decided to disown me, George had been my best friend and the person whom I could confide in about anything. My phone buzzed against my hip.

"You've wasted enough of my time already. We are getting this sorted today even if I have to drag you to Uncle Peters office by your hair myself. You need to grow up."

Oh, my lovely older brother. Such a way with words.

"I think that Archie is probably more equipped for dragging people around by their hair. LA has made you podgy."

"I'm being serious Lola. Make sure you are there."

I growled.

"I'm being serious too, George. Carbs are not your friend. Especially carbs coated in cheese and bacon."

"Fuck you."

"Now who needs to grow up?"

I watched my phone. It remained ominously silent. I would pay for that later. I opened up the music application and searched through the new songs that Steve had downloaded for me. Gays always had the best music taste. I pressed play when I came to "Dare" by Gorillaz and turned the volume up to the maximum that it would go. Have you ever heard this song? It's one of those weirdly infectious, catchy numbers that makes you dance even if you don't want to. I sat quietly, picking a strand of cotton that had come loose from the couch. I was going to dance. I had to. The nervous energy coursing around my body was finding its way into my feet.

"Fine...!" I grumbled to myself. "Let's just get this over with."

I started to move. I hadn't danced in such a long time. I was one of those really terrible dancers with flailing limbs. I was 5ft10. Dancing was a hazard when you were 5ft10. But still, I danced. I threw myself around. I shook my hips and flicked my hair and generally span around in very questionable circles. But I was smiling. One of those big stupid goofy grins that you reserve for really important pictures that everybody was going to see. My last high school picture was a disaster. I looked like I had dropped about thirty E's and I was having the time of my life. Regardless of what Steve and Charlotte seemed to think about me and my bone structure, I looked positively crazed when I smiled. I was still dancing. Smiling and dancing. I was also jumping around. I hadn't felt this happy in months. I was halfway through a particularly overzealous hip thrust when I caught sight of my audience. I stopped instantly. Steve and Charlotte were watching me. They looked horrified. I pulled a headphone out and stared at them.

"Yes?" I asked. "Can I help you?"

They both continued to stare.

"Well if that's all I think -"

"What song are you listening to?" Steve asked, an eyebrow raised.

I can't believe I was being judged by a man wearing Spongebob Squarepants pyjamas.

"None of your business." I replied, quickly.

"Your limbs do very strange things when you dance." Charlotte said. "They don't look like they're attached to your body."

"That's what I want them to look like." I retorted.

Steve entered the room first. He grabbed the phone from my hand. Charlotte appeared at my side. She squeezed my hand.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked. "Because you look mentally deranged."

"Yeah, well, you have messy hair."

She narrowed her eyes at me. Steve yanked the remaining earbud from my ear and took my phone over to the system we had set up in the corner of the living room. We had installed it under the impression that we would have house parties every weekend and would need something to play music from. We had, so far, hosted one party. Three people had been sick on our brand new sofa and we had caught another two having really questionable sex in Steve's bed and it dawned on the three of us pretty quickly that we loved our little house too much to invite strange people into it. Plus, we were medical students. We weren't really afforded the luxury of time to party.

"I have to meet with the triplets today to sort out the will." I told Charlotte, while Steve hummed to himself, his fingers furiously searching through my music collection. "George has been texting me this morning."

Charlotte straightened up. I saw something flash behind her eyes. It was only there for a moment but it was there.

"That's today?" Her eyes flickered to Steve, who glanced at her briefly. Something passed wordlessly between them.

I looked back and forth at my two best friends. There was something they weren't telling me.

"What's -"

I was cut off by Steve who shouted triumphantly. He fixed my phone up to the system with a flourish.

"Baby girl.." He grinned and walked towards me. His and Charlotte's moment was gone. "If you're going to dance alone, you at least need to dance to something good."

He was grinning wildly. The opening bars of the song boomed through the living room. I grinned.

"Oh Steve, I knew I entered a sexless marriage with you for a reason." I jumped up and wrapped my arms around him, kissing him sloppily on the cheek.

It was The Pussycat Dolls. Everybody knew the song. It had been dominating the radio and the clubs for weeks now. It was ridiculously catchy, and the video had six unbelievably smoking hot girls gyrating around Busta Rhymes.

"Char..." Steve looked at her. I saw a look flash between them and within seconds she was up and jumping around.

And we danced. We laughed at each other and did the kind of ridiculous moves that you can only do with your best friends and we danced some more. And I momentarily forgot about meeting with my brothers to hear the last will and testament of our parents. I also forgot about the looks that had passed between Steve and Charlotte and tried to shrug off the overwhelming feeling that there was something that my best friends weren't telling me.